For some unknown reason, I always wanted to know the truth about life more than anything else. So much so that every wish I ever made was only to know this truth. Since I believed meditation would eventually expose this truth, I started doing meditation practices every day when I was just 6 years old.

Naturally, I also had many other goals. I wanted success, wealth, and a job I enjoyed. I wanted to prove I was smart. I wanted to go to amazing parties, to date beautiful women, and to see the most beautiful places in the world. I wanted people to love me.

Somehow, while still quite young, I managed to get everything I had ever wanted.

• I was working in a prestigious and high-paying job that I loved as a corporate strategy consultant in London, worked on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs, and was later accepted into the prestigious Mensa society.
• I traveled around the world, and saw more incredible scenes of nature than I could have imagined
• I enjoyed unbelievable parties in exotic places (always sober), and dated beautiful women from all around Europe
• Everyone always seemed to love me. I was very happy.

Yet I still wasn’t content. I frequently judged others. I worried about others’ opinions of me. I was constantly trying to improve myself. My mind was constantly searching for more enjoyable experiences. The bottom line being that I just never felt complete or at peace.

Then, in one moment, during a meditation retreat in the summer of 2009, all of my thoughts seemed to completely disappear from my mind. The result was the experience of tremendous peace, freedom, and contentment. As it turned out, this wasn’t just a passing experience. The vast majority of my psychological thoughts just vanished, and have rarely attempted to return since. That moment marked the end of my pursuit of happiness.

This shift led me to discover 5 major things:

1. Any time I experience an unwanted emotion, it is only created by believing a thought in my mind.
2. Each time I identify the thought that is creating my unwanted emotion, I can question whether that thought is true, and discover that I really don’t know whether it is.
3. Once I stop believing a thought to be true, I stop experiencing the emotion that thought created, and I come right back to the inherent peace of the present moment.
4. Each time I disbelieve a thought, that thought rarely ever shows up again in my mind.
5. No matter what my circumstances are, I am always fulfilled when I don’t have any psychological thoughts or don’t believe my psychological thoughts.

At this point, the thoughts that generally create suffering and discontent for people either don’t arise in my mind or aren’t believed when they do show up. This has left me with a predominantly silent mind, and the virtually uninterrupted experience of peace. No matter what is going on in my life, since no thought about it is believed, I remain feeling peaceful, happy, and whole. This is not some special experience. It is simply the inherent experience of the present moment (what we all had as young children).

In the summer of 2010 I quit my job as a Strategy Consultant, and started to teach individual sessions and write about how to live in the moment. Now I teach individual sessions full-time, and my book “A Guide to the Present Moment” is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.